Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past an...d future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resour...ces of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, bro...wn, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners "on the lone prairie" gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade... and to give men their freedom. Let them do what they are best at. While we scrawl interoffice memos and direct national or extranational affairs, men could spend all their time inventing wheels, peering at stars, composing poems, carving statues, exploring continents--discovering, reforming, or crying out in a sacramental wilderness. Efficiency would probably increase, and no one would have to worry so much about the Gaza Strip or an election.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »